The Curse of Corpus Christi
by ArielSprite
Summary: Jasmine St James has lived her whole life staring at the stars, desperately wanting to see them a little closer. In twenty years she's hoped and dreamed of the Doctor, the man flying through time and space in his little blue box, but never seen him herself. Then he turns up one day and she's in for one hell of a shock.


**This is sort of a sequel to my oneshot Unlucky Thirteen. This is the Doctor's next adventure. I hope you all enjoy :D**

In 1231 several disenchanted scholars from Oxford University banded together to form a new university in another town over a river. In the eight hundred and two years since its founding Cambridge University had seen hundreds and hundreds of thousands of students pass through its historic halls. Scientists, mathematicians, actors, singers, television personalities, best-selling authors, politicians, journalists, explorers and athletes had once trodden those hallowed halls. The university itself offered courses in every subject imaginable and even some that you would never think of. As one of the best universities in the world it was obvious that more students wanted to go there than almost anything else in the entire world; but only a select few got in.

Penzance, Cornwall was as far away from Cambridge as anyone in England could get. It wasn't a particularly big place but it was home to twenty one thousand, one hundred and twenty eight people. The St James family had moved there exactly twenty years ago becoming population numbers twenty one thousand, one hundred and twenty four, twenty one thousand, one hundred and twenty five, twenty one thousand, one hundred and twenty six and twenty one thousand, one hundred and twenty seven. The youngest member of the family, Jasmine Emilia, would grow up with only one memory other than her life; the memory of a man and his little blue box, a man who travelled through the stars in his magic box.

It would be many years before Jasmine realised just how important that man and his precious blue box would be in her life and so she grew up dreaming of a bright and wonderful future where she could travel the stars and see the entire universe. Eventually, after being told repeatedly that it would never happen, the girl called Jasmine let that plan fade away to the back of her mind while another ambition burned at the very forefront of it.

She might never see the rest of the universe; but she would do something meaningful. Jasmine knew that she was destined to do something brilliant with her life. When she picked up a pencil and began to draw, she knew that magic would flow from it and so her love of designing buildings and objects along with her natural thirst for knowledge and a talent for physics bore the genius of a young engineer, inventor and explorer.

It was several years, twelve GCSEs, five A levels and an acceptance letter to study engineering and physics at Cambridge University before Jasmine thought about travelling through the stars again. Her childhood had been filled with tales of the man and his blue box; tales of the Doctor. One day, when she left her dorm room with her best friend Nina she saw a man. He wasn't anything special. Rather short, dark brown curly hair, strange triangular eyebrows and hazel eyes. But there was something about him that drew Jasmine to him. She stared at him as she walked past, her eyes locked onto his. They were so old, and so filled with pain.

Life as a student was unlike anything else that Jasmine had known before. Many of the students at Cambridge lived in the dorm rooms provided. They were usually in large, old fashioned buildings, well-furnished and comfortable. Several of the dorm buildings were near to the river and there was one, Kayseri House, which was right on the riverside. It was too far away from most colleges to be used by very many students, but some preferred the secluded area by the river.

Jasmine was one of those students. She was eighteen years old, just beginning her first year at Cambridge when she had first moved in. Moving to the university town hadn't been an easy decision for her. She had chosen to leave behind all her friends, her family and her home town. Nothing had been the same ever since. It seemed stupid to travel home on weekends and so homesickness could suddenly surround her at inopportune moments. Luckily though, the dorm house, and the river that it overlooked, had grown on Jasmine and she loved waking up and being able to look out upon the sparkling waters every morning.

For three years Jasmine woke up, washed and dressed before leaving with Nina to go to her lectures. In the evenings she would sit and complete her assignments and on occasion, after a particularly good, or sometime bad, day she would allow Nina to drag her out into town and get completely hammered. Though if any of her professors asked, her computer had broken and that was why her assignments hadn't been handed in on time. Surprisingly the excuse worked like a charm.

The morning in which our story starts was one of Jasmine's preferred mornings. As strange as it seemed, when the sky was a beautiful dove grey, and fluffy white clouds stretched across the sky, she couldn't be happier. The river was a steely grey colour and smooth as glass.

As much as Jasmine wanted to sleep in, when her alarm clock went off, she had to get out of bed and get ready for the day ahead. There was a thump from the next room, which Jasmine took to be her friend Nina waking up. Nina never got up before noon if she could help it, but they both had lectures to get to.

Once Jasmine had showered and was dressed she packed her books and her laptop into her bag along with her purse and her phone. She checked her appearance in the mirror one last time, framing her eyes in mascara and eyeliner before adding a slick of lip gloss as her final touch.

She knocked on Nina's door several times, expecting no response from her friend. To her surprise the door opened almost immediately and Nina was stood there, looking dreadful. Now Nina was the kind of girl who got drunk at least three times a week and then spent the other four days complaining about her hangover. Jasmine had been on the receiving end of many a post-night on the town rant. Nina usually looked dreadful in the first few hours following one of her mass alcohol intakes but Jasmine had never seen her look so terrible. Her hair was messy, her eyes were puffy, her nose was bright red and she looked like she hadn't slept in about three weeks. She was dressed in a thick bathrobe and she had tissues coming out of her pockets. Jasmine's mouth dropped open.

"I don't fink I'm coming to class today," Nina sniffled, her nose bunged up with snot. Jasmine nodded, stepping back as Nina sneezed.

"I think that's for the best," she said, avoiding Nina slightly. "Today's going to suck without you though. The Leibman lecture is this afternoon, and if you're not there it means I have to sit on my own!"

"You'll be fine," Nina snorted. "Just flirt with Marc, you know he likes you!" Jasmine poked her tongue out.

"I'll text you after the lecture," she grinned. "Get some rest and get better."

Nina nodded before closing the door in Jasmine's face. Jasmine pulled out her phone, unwrapped her headphones and slid them in her ears, tapping several buttons on her phone and letting the smooth tones of Darren Criss' The Muse wash over her.

Almost as soon as Jasmine had pushed open the front door to the boarding house her phone buzzed with a text from Nina. She let out a laugh as she read Nina's message. _Rmber 2 pt lpstk on b4 u sng M! _Jasmine shook her head at her friend's antics.

Kayseri House wasn't that far away from Clare, which was the college that Jasmine attended, so she could easily walk from her boarding house to her lectures. It was also conveniently located near to town so she could go out and get drunk whenever she liked, though that was really Nina's area of expertise. There was a Starbucks on her way and Jasmine walked in the door, as she did most mornings.

Though it was only eight in the morning there was a fairly decent queue already, and so Jasmine joined the end of it, music still playing.

"Salmon bagel and a caramel Frappuccino with extra cream to go please. The name's Jasmine," she said when she finally got to the front of the line. The barista nodded and Jasmine made her way to the end of the counter to wait for her drink.

Starbucks may do excellent coffee, particularly brilliant for alerting the mind before a particularly boring lecture, but they did like to take their time when making them. Jasmine slouched against the counter tapping her fingers gently against her thigh, making her green chiffon skirt flutter slightly. Her eyes drifted over to the window where a young man of about twenty three, twenty four (twenty five at most) was sat, a cup of coffee in his hands.

He was gorgeous; as even Nina, who only ever dated scumbags and bikers, would agree. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was lean and muscular, and very easy on the eyes. He was relatively clean shaven, with just a little bit of stubble surrounding his mouth. His skin was slightly paler than Jasmine's deep olive colouring, and his hair was a silky brown mass of curls. He had the strangest eyebrows that Jasmine had ever seen, they were triangular, but Jasmine quite liked them, they were rather attractive. He was dressed in a pair of figure hugging jeans, a blue shirt and a brown suede waistcoat. His brown pea coat was slung over the back of his chair and he was reading the newspaper in front of him.

Suddenly the man looked up and Jasmine turned away, an embarrassed flush blue spreading across her cheeks. The barista called her name, and she accepted her bagel and Frappuccino. Jasmine began walking out of the door, her hips swinging slightly as she went, the clip-clop of her squared heeled boots echoing around the room. Just before she left Jasmine snuck a look at waistcoat guy but he was gone. She looked around but couldn't find him. How strange.

For the rest of the journey to college Jasmine watched her surroundings. When she was a little girl she had made up lives for each of the people that she saw. She had competed with her brother to see who could come up with the most interesting story. It had been a long time since she had done that but for the first time in years, as she made her way down Silver Street, she found herself doing just that. As she turned left onto Trinity Lane Jasmine passed a woman in a fur coat, false eyelashes and six inch heels. That was one person she was sure her parents would disapprove of her making a story for.

Just as she was about to enter the beautiful building that the college resided in Jasmine turned around sharply, almost cricking her neck. She had been struck by the strangest sensation, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, her stomach churning and her muscles tensing slightly. She couldn't see anything unusual but Jasmine was almost certain that there was something different about the small street; something dangerous. Despite the warmth of the day Jasmine couldn't help but feel cold. It was like shadows were creeping in on her.

Clare College had an incredible courtyard. It was all lush green lawns, perfectly trimmed by the grounds men, with huge flowerbeds filled with incredibly plants, the vibrant colours standing out against the yellowed stone of the building. Students were milling around; some of them flopped onto the lawn, others walking across the stone pathways to the main building. In the far left corner, next to one of the enormous flowerbeds lounged a group of students.

"Jaz!" one of them shouted, waving Jasmine over. She made her way there, greeting several of the people that she met along the way.

"Good morning," she grinned, flopping down onto an empty patch of grass, tossing her bag down, sipping at her Frappuccino as she went. "Nina's not coming in today. She says that she's ill but she's probably just skiving so that she can go and party with that loser boyfriend of hers."

A collective groan went round the group. Nina's partying habits and string of boyfriends was often a cause of annoyance among their group of friends. More than once they had been thrown out of clubs and bars because of Nina or her latest squeeze. Despite everything though, her street sense had come in handy on many an occasion, especially when it came to dates. Nina had weeded out at least five of Jasmine's "loser/cheater/pathetic excuse for a human being" boyfriends. Surprisingly the cream of the crop, Cambridge University, had an awful lot of losers/cheaters/pathetic excuses for human beings and the sad thing was, that by their second year Nina, Jasmine and another of their best friends Carina, had dated most of them.

Jasmine took another sip of her frozen coffee as she looked round the circle. Luke, the tanned Californian boy was closest to her, his hands splayed backwards on the grass, head turned up to the sky, desperately soaking up the few rays of sunshine that Cambridge was going to get this year. Claudi, a pretty redhead with big blue eyes had her head in his lap and leaning against her knees was a slightly plainer girl with jet black hair and a pair of wire framed glasses. Kyle, Jonah, Leo and Harry all sat with their backs against the stone flowerbed, sloppy grins on their faces.

"Look out boys," Leo called out, nodding towards a young man who was hurrying along the path, his shoulders hunched over, a stack of books cradled in his arms.

"Leave him alone," Jasmine replied lazily.

"But that wouldn't be nearly as fun!" Harry protested. "Hey, Erik! Think fast!" He had, for some reason that was completely beyond Jasmine, a tennis ball in his hand and had tossed it towards the boy walking down the path. All the books went tumbling from his arms and as he stooped to pick them up the tennis ball rolled towards Jasmine.

She rolled her eyes as she stood up and handed the remainder of the books back to boy who smiled shyly in return. Jasmine grabbed the tennis ball, her bag and her now empty coffee cup before beginning down the path to the main building.

"Where are you going?" Jonah shouted after her.

"To my lecture," Jasmine said, rolling her eyes again. "Just because the rest of you like lazing in the sun, doesn't mean that I don't have classes to get to." She flashed a grin at them. "Oh and, Harry, think fast!"

"Huh?"

Jasmine snorted slightly as she tossed the ball directly at her friend's head and smirked as he winced in pain.

"Ciao, mi amigos," she grinned, stalking off.

Her path followed that of the boy with the books; they were in fact, going to the same class. While she didn't know him at all well, Jasmine knew the boy's name, and knew that Kristopher Kryzkowski, as he was called, was really very clever. She had never actually had a decent conversation with the boy, but he had always seemed nice.

Jasmine made it through her lectures easily that morning. She sat at the back of her class, carefully taking notes on her laptop, the middle-aged professor droning on and on. Other than Kristopher, Jasmine was probably the only person in the class whose attention wasn't captivated by the glorious sunshine filtering through the clear glass. One would think that they had never seen sunlight before for the way that they were all staring at the golden rays. Jasmine rolled her eyes. She knew that Professor Fiala wasn't the most interesting of teachers, but this was an important year, it was vital that they paid attention in every class.

Despite her determination to do well, after nearly an hour of listening to Fiala's monotonous drone on the subject of electro luminescent characteristics of Polymer and Quantum Dots Nanocomposite Light Emitting Devices even Jasmine found herself glancing out at Clare's grounds.

The first few times she had done so, all she was staring at was the empty lawn, now devoid of sun soaking students; but when she looked back a seventh time there was somebody stood there, just staring up at the windows of the classroom that Jasmine was sat in. With a start, Jasmine realised that she recognised the curly hair and clothes of the man. A blue a white checked shirt, brown waistcoat and brown pea coat along with a pair of jeans was exactly what Waistcoat Guy had been wearing in Starbucks earlier that morning.

When he saw Jasmine looking Waistcoat Guy just grinned, winking at her. Jasmine's jaw dropped open, heat rising to her cheeks as she did so. What on earth was that man doing? How did he even get in? You needed to see Charles, the porter, and show him your identification before you could enter the building. Jasmine knew everyone at Clare College. There were around four hundred and fifty undergraduates, just over one hundred postgraduates and that man was not an undergrad, or a postgrad. Most, if not all, of the male population of Clare had passes through Nina's bedroom at some point and Jasmine had never seen this man before. Of course there was the possibility that he was from another Cambridge college, but it was unlikely that someone from another college would be coming to Clare for anything other than lectures that were being held there and Jasmine knew those few people. Nina had probably slept with most of them.

"...attention, Miss St James!"

Jasmine turned back to see Professor Fiala stood right in front of her, glaring. Oops. She had probably been gaping at the man outside, completely ignoring the lecture. Fiala, while he didn't realise when most of the class were ignoring him, did realise when he turned to look around, or call upon the class, and someone (in this case Jasmine) was gazing outside.

"I apologise Professor," Jasmine said immediately. Despite the panic that now bubbled in her stomach she was able to keep a calm face. "I just saw..."

"Saw what, Miss St James?" Fiala demanded. "There's nothing out there."

"But..." Jasmine looked back out of the window. There was, indeed, nothing out there. The man had vanished. "It must have been a trick of the light," she said, her mind whirring. "Once again, sir, I'm sorry I got distracted."

Fiala made a harrumphing noise before turning back to his whiteboard, tapping it with his pen, and continuing on with his lecture.

Relaxing slightly, Jasmine turned her attention to her professor once more, only glancing out of the window once more before the end of the lecture, seeing nothing but the elegantly trimmed lawns again.

The halls were filled with bustling students chatting to each other, books in their arms, the civilized, eloquent discussions of redbrick university students was music to Jasmine's ears. For so long she had worked so hard to get where she was, and when she had first arrived she had been completely in awe. It had taken her a few weeks and one drunken night on the town with Nina to settle in properly. Three years later she couldn't be more at home.

Luke hailed her as she entered the courtyard and she made her way over to him, slumping onto the grass next to him.

"You were right," he said, handing over his phone. Jasmine glanced at it and sighed. Someone had taken a picture of a club, it was dark with bright lights in a few places, and hanging off the arm of a twenty something year old man, clearly drunk, was Nina. Her blonde hair was tumbling over her shoulders and her lipstick was smudged in one corner of her mouth.

"Oh God," Jasmine groaned. "That girl needs a hobby."

"Tell me about it," Luke agreed. "You fancy coming out for lunch? It's on me!"

Jasmine sent him a regretful look.

"Sorry, I can't. Normally I would say yes, but the Leibman lecture starts in twenty minutes and I _can't_ miss it!"

"How did you even manage to get into the Leibman lecture?" Luke asked. "Isn't it just for the best of the graduating class? _We_ still have another year to go." He looked at her curiously. Jasmine shrugged. "What are you hiding my little Jazz Machine? Oh don't look at me like that, we all know how excited you get when you've had a few."

"Just for that, I'm not going to tell you," Jasmine said, playfully punching Luke on the arm. "And now I have to go. I need to grab something from Dr Hassun before the lecture starts." Luke wrinkled his nose at the name of Jasmine's tutor. "He's honestly not that bad."

"Yeah, tell that to the pile of homework that he gave me last week!"

"Goodbye Luke," Jasmine said, standing up and beginning the short trip to her tutor's office in the east corner of the college. She rushed up the stairs, her heeled boot tapping away at the worn wood of the stairs. Her right hand glided over the polished oak of the handle her breathing and footsteps the only sounds. That was unusual. The East Corner, as it was called by the students, was where a large number of tutors had their offices. It was always, always bustling with people, always.

Jasmine walked down the corridor to Dr Hassun's office. His door was open just a crack and Jasmine could hear a strange sort of buzzing in the air. A frown appeared on Jasmine's face. Hassun hated anything less than perfect. His office was perfectly tidy at all times, he never left his door open ("it encourages unruliness" he had claimed the first time she had met him) and he expected nothing but the best from his students and especially his tutees. It had earned him a reputation at Cambridge as one of the, if not _the_, toughest tutors to have. Jasmine knew that her friends thought she was mad for actually liking Hassun, but he had been the one to get her through her fresher's year and Jasmine owed an awful lot to that man.

"Hello," she called out, pushing the door open. The room was just how it had been the last time Jasmine was in there, neat as ever, everything in its place. But still, Jasmine knew that something was wrong. That sensation that she'd had earlier, outside the college, it was back. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, it was like she was being watched. "Is anyone in here? Dr Hassun?"

There was a squeaking noise and Jasmine whipped round, her curls flying as she turned to stare at the cupboard where the noise had come from.

"Who's there?" she demanded sharply. "Sir, is that you?"

There was no answer. Jasmine's heart was racing. Someone was watching her. They had been watching her earlier, when she had entered the college. Maybe even earlier than that. Why else would Hassun have disappeared, his door left open? That was no accident. Someone, or something, had deliberately done that. How long had they been watching her? How else would they have been able to know that she would come here to pick up her work? And what had they done with Hassun? If they had taken him from behind he wouldn't have been able to stop them. Whoever they were.

"Dr Hassun," Jasmine called out slowly. "I just need to pick up my essay. You said that it'd be ready by today."

She made her way over to the desk. Everything was neatly organised and Jasmine could see her essay on the top of his outbox. Hassun's neat writing annotated it in green ink and Jasmine gathered up the papers that made up her essay before rushing back to the door as quickly as possible.

Once she was outside, she closed the door, leaning against it, her breath ragged. Her phone buzzed in her bag and Jasmine searched through to find it.

"...man! He's here Jaz!" Jonah was shouting excitedly. "Can you believe it?"

"Believe what?" Jasmine asked, pressing the phone to her ear, glancing back at the door one last time before hurrying to the staircase and running down the stairs.

"That Lirri Leibman is here! At Clare! Everyone's outside watching him. We're saving you a front row seat! God, Nina's going to be so pissed that she missed this! Hurry up, you'll miss him!"

"Jo, I'm going to his lecture! I don't need to wait outside to see him!"

"How the hell did you get into his lecture?" Jonah demanded.

"Gotta go Jo!" Jasmine said in answer, hanging up and tossing her phone back in her bag. Her head was pounding and she felt sick to her stomach, fear was flooding her system and she knew that she might throw up at any point. All the same though, the Leibman lecture was going to begin soon, and Jasmine wasn't going to miss that for anything. She had been waiting for this lecture since she was fifteen. One stupid, terrifying moment in her tutor's office wasn't going to stop her from going. Nothing would.

She ducked into an alcove as several freshers hurried past, probably going to take a look at Leibman before he disappeared into his lecture.

Jasmine checked that the cost was clear before darting out of her hiding place and continuing down the corridor. Twice more she had to slip into alcoves or press herself against the wall as someone came round the corner. If anyone knew what she was doing then she could be expelled. Breaking and entering just to see a lecture, well, it wasn't unheard of, but for someone to risk their place at Cambridge for one lecture, now that was rather unlikely.

This wasn't just any old lecture though. God knew that Jasmine had attended hundreds in her three years at Cambridge so far, but nobody in history had ever attended such an important lecture as the one that was being held in the Elizabeth Hall at that very moment.

When she was sure that no one was around, Jasmine made her way over to the carved wooden door opposite a set of huge, stained glass windows. She slipped a hairpin from her sleeve and began wiggling it in the lock. It was a few long seconds before she heard a click, and the door swung open. A smirk spread across her face and she pushed the door open, closing it behind her.

The Elizabeth Hall was the biggest and grandest lecture hall in the whole of Cambridge University. It was also the one with the best technology. It had a whole projection room set up at the back, and next to that room was another one, an empty room that could still see into the hall, with all the sound from there travelling through to that little room but on the other side of the glass was a mirror. Jasmine and Nina had discovered it less than three weeks into their first term there and they had never really had the chance to use it ever since. It was a brilliant hiding place though. You would need to know that it was there first, and for the person in there to be practically screaming their heads off for anyone in the hall to find them.

Students in their fourth year, lecturers and several journalists were entering the hall. Jasmine's eyes roved over them hungrily, searching for Leibman.

There he was. A tall, thin man with pale skin and a shock of hair so blonde that it was almost white. He had huge, luminous eyes and his lips were wide, puffy and red, like he'd had plastic surgery done to them recently. He was dressed in a crisp black suit, like he was going to a funeral. Jasmine didn't know what she was expecting from him, but it wasn't this. She had always thought of him as being an enigmatic person; in his books he had always seemed so eloquent and charismatic, his words were wonderful and powerful and he had always seemed so self-assured, so knowledgeable.

Jasmine blinked, shaking her head. She had gone into a small trance moment. According to her parents and her brother she had done it plenty of times in her childhood. Nina said that occasionally she did it but not nearly as often any more. Why on earth had she thought that she could know a person just from a book that they probably didn't write themselves?

Click!

The noise reverberated around the room and Jasmine jumped to her feet, grasping her bag in one hand, her heart racing as she stared at the opening door.

"What are you doing here?" the man demanded.

All Jasmine could do for what seemed like hours was stare. The man standing in front of her was the same one that she had seen in the coffee shop that morning, and earlier, in her lecture, he had been stood in the courtyard staring up at the windows. And now he was here, in a room that he shouldn't have been able to find. It blended into the wall behind it. How on earth had a man that shouldn't have every stepped foot in Cambridge University been able to find it in less than an hour.

"I could ask you the same," she replied when she recovered the power of speech. "At least I attend this university. Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Me? I'm no one," Waistcoat guy answered distractedly. "Who are you?"

"Nina," Jasmine answered cautiously. "Metcalf. Nina Metcalf. And you can't be no one. You have to be someone."

"No, you don't Nina Metcalf," Waistcoat guy said with a grin, shutting the door. "And I still don't know what you're doing here."

"Today's the Leibman lecture," Jasmine replied, sitting back down. "I might never get the chance to see something as ground-breaking as this ever again. I'm just as good, if not better, than those students in there, but I'm not allowed in just because I'm younger than them."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty one in seventeen days," she answered. "I know more about engineering and astrophysics than almost anyone in there. This could change the world, I wasn't going to let a little thing like age get in the way of me seeing the great Lirri Leibman as he builds a "pathway to the stars". Why? Got a problem with that?"

"You're very confident aren't you Nina Metcalf?" Waistcoat asked. "Some would almost call it arrogance." Jasmine shrugged.

"Is it arrogance if it's true?" she challenged.

"I could just tell those lecturers that you're attempting to sneak into the Leibman lecture, you know," Waistcoat said.

"You could," Jasmine said thoughtfully. "But you won't. And you know how I know?" Waistcoat raised his eyebrows. "Because you're not supposed to be here either. I know everyone in this college and I've never seen you before today."

"I could be a guest," Waistcoat pointed out. "It's not just Clare college students and lecturers here."

"If you were a guest, you wouldn't be in here," Jasmine replied. "You would be sat in there, with the rest of them. Anyone at this place would die to have a place in there. You wouldn't give up a seat in the same room as Lirri Leibman if you had one. Rumour has it that he hasn't been turned down for an appointment or anything really in nearly three years. Only an idiot would give up a chance to actually meet him."

"Maybe I'm an idiot."

"Idiots are the ones who try to bring dogs, bikes, radios and picnics into the grounds. Idiots don't find film rooms with hidden doors in Cambridge colleges."

"Ooh, ice woman aren't you?"

"That tends to be the prevailing opinion," Jasmine replied coolly. "I balance out my friend's insanity and rashness."

"I wouldn't have had you down as someone with...insane friends," Waistcoat said. Jasmine raised a single eyebrow.

"Didn't have you down as a green tea bloke." Waistcoat raised his eyebrows curiously. "I can smell it on your breath."

"You're really quite clever aren't you?"

"Again, that is the prevailing opinion. Now, if you're not going to shut up, you can either get out, or let me tape your mouth shut."

"Tape my mouth shut?"

"Or kick you in the nuts," Jasmine shrugged. "Though to be honest it would just be easier for you to shut up."

"Ooh, you're tetchy aren't you?"

"I don't want to miss history in the making," Jasmine told him simply.

Waistcoat guy fell silent after that, seemingly understanding on the matter. Jasmine tapped several buttons on her laptop, opening up a transcriber app that she'd downloaded onto it. Then she removed a small, sleek camera from her bag. It was actually Nina's, but Jasmine had borrowed it several months beforehand and hadn't actually given it back yet. She'd been planning to do that for some time but kept forgetting.

"Camera preparing for recording," a small, tinny voice came from the camera. "Menu options are available for selection."

"Heighten video and sound quality," Jasmine ordered. "I want every moment of this recorded. And make sure that the memory card can hold this first. If you need to, delete the pictures of Luke's nineteenth."

"Options, accepted," the camera said. Jasmine grinned.

"How did you do that?" Waistcoat asked gazing at the camera. "You shouldn't have that kind of technology. Where did you get it?"

"I made it!" Jasmine said, affronted. "It's isn't exactly difficult. All you have to do is replicate the stabilisers in the micro card and replace the electromagnetic wave going from the battery to the USB with the magnetic feedback. Then all that's left is adding in the directions. You can use the voice format from a satnav easily enough."

"But that's brilliant!"

"Again, prevailing opinion. Wait, what are you doing?"

Waistcoat guy had suddenly sat forward, peering at her as if her were attempting to unlock the secrets of her mind. All of a sudden the strangest feeling was back, that sensation of being watched. Had waistcoat guy been the one to do that? Was he the reason that Hassun hadn't been in his office? He was still searching her face for something. Jasmine backed away slightly, he was beginning to give her the creeps.

"I know you from somewhere," Waistcoat guy said, confusedly. "Where though?" He looked at her again. "Where are from?"

"Penzance," she answered.

"Penzance? Where's Penzance?"

"It's in Cornwall!"

"Uughh!" Waistcoat guy shuddered. "Cornwall!"

"What's wrong with Cornwall?"

"What isn't would be a better question!"

"Look," Jasmine began, and then changed tack. "Can I at least get a name? It'll be easier than calling you "waistcoat guy" in my head."

"You call me waistcoat guy in your head?"

"Yes, and I'd quite like to be able to change that!"

Jasmine was now on her feet, standing nose to nose with Waistcoat guy, well, she was actually slightly taller than him so it was nose to eye really, He was glaring at her and she was glaring back. Waistcoat guy was still searching her face.

"Smith, John Smith," he said all of a sudden.

"What?"

"My name, it's John Smith. I'm with the government, thought I'd sneak a peek at old Leibman, you know how it is. Look."

He handed her something like a leather wallet and Jasmine opened it. He was grinning away, tapping it so proudly.

"This is blank," she stated. He frowned.

"Look closer."

"I don't need to," Jasmine said. "It's blank."

"Interesting," Smith, if that was his real name and Jasmine really doubted that, said, once again looking at Jasmine with abundant curiosity. "Definitely human, too much gob for my liking, thinks the world of herself and has a seriously bad attitude but definitely not an alien. Psychic maybe? If she had psychic training-do you have psychic training-or genius level-"

"Let's go with the second one shall we?" Jasmine said sharply.

"There it is again, attitude!"

"Shut up!"

"What is it with you Cambridge lot? Always with the superiority complex!"

"I do _not _have a superiority complex! You're the one who came swanning in here, clearly pretending to be someone you're not!"

"I don't pretend-"

Jasmine was sure that Smith would have carried on arguing but he had been cut off by a bang coming from Nina's camera. It had just blown up! All that was left was a smouldering wreck of metal and Jasmine's mouth dropped open in horror. It had taken her nearly three hours to properly stabilise that micro card and it had just been destroyed. But by what? It was probably Smith, there was something shifty about him. Who was actually called John Smith anymore anyway?

"What the hell did you do?" Jasmine demanded.

"Be quiet! Just listen!"

Normally Jasmine would respond with a cutting remark, it was one of her little quirks, but the words died on her lips as she found herself listening.

"What is that?" she breathed. "That buzzing?"

Smith grabbed a pair of bright pink 3D glasses, like the ones you got from the cinema, from his coat pocket and shoved them on his face, tilting his head at the window.

"They're here! In the lecture hall!"

"Who's here?"

"That, that doesn't matter right now, listen, I've got to go!" Smith was making his way across the room, towards the door. "Go home, Nina," he told her seriously. "Just, get out of the university; text all your mates, tell them to get out too, I'll get everyone else out. GO!"

"Why do we need to get out?"

"Look in there," Smith ordered her. "There are, what, three hundred, three hundred and fifty people in there. And if they don't get out now, they're going to die. All of them!"

"But why?"

"Have you ever heard of the Regnenses?"

"Of course!"

"You have?"

"I got an A* in GCSE Latin," Jasmine said rolling her eyes.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Well, aren't they that tribe from the Cambridge Latin course books?" Smith stared at her for a few seconds before shaking his head.

"No. Well, maybe, but that's also the name of a race of aliens," he said.

"Aliens. Are you insane or something?"

"Yes, I am!"

"Oh that's very reassuring," Jasmine muttered, shoving her laptop into her bag and following Smith out of the door. "What kind of aliens?"

"Wait, so you believe in aliens now? You really change your mind quickly don't you!"

"Woman's prerogative," Jasmine shrugged. "And I would be stupid not to, wouldn't I? After all the crap that's gone down on this planet only an idiot would ignore the signs of alien life. Surprised that you believe," she added.

"You're very rude," Smith said. "I know, I know, prevailing opinion!"

"Who's being rude now?" Jasmine huffed. Smith shot a look at her.

"Still you," he sighed. "But the point is, that hall in there is infected with a swarm of Regnenses. They're tiny, so small that you can't see them without these-" He waved the pink glasses in Jasmine's face. "But they're powerful. They're electro-aliens. Aliens that give out electronic waves." Jasmine resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She had figured that much out by herself. "They can send electric impulses to the brain and use that connection to send orders; it's a way of controlling people."

"So these aliens," Jasmine said, ditching her bag by the door and hurrying after Smith. "What exactly are they doing here?"

"I don't know," Smith replied, running a hand through his hair. "I've seen them before, once or twice in my time, and each time they killed."

"How? Don't they just want to control?"

"No, not exactly. It's complicated."

"So are Free Electron Lasers but I made my own when I was just fifteen years old," Jasmine challenged. "I'm clever and I want to know what the hell is going on."

"The Regnenses, they feed off of the impulses in the brain. They can suck people's minds completely clean. Leave them with nothing. No memories, no knowledge, nothing."

"But their hearts would still be beating," Jasmine breathed in horror. "So they would still be alive, but in a vegetable state. A fate worse than death."

"Indeed," Smith nodded. "And I have to stop them."

"Why, who are you?"

"I told you, no one," Smith said, waving a hand. "Now run, as far away from here as possible. RUN!"

But Jasmine couldn't run. Smith had already taken off, rushing down the corridor while Jasmine was stood there, stock still. Her headache was back, she was feeling dizzy, and now she knew who Smith was. A voice echoed through her mind; the voice of her grandfather. _One man; the lonely God, travelling the stars in his little blue box. _Jasmine could almost hear her six year old self replying eagerly. _**But Granddad, why was he alone?**_ Her voice always sounded so heartbroken to hear of the lonely man, wandering through the universe. Her Grandfather would laugh and ruffle her hair. _He isn't always lonely. Sometimes, people travel with him. He takes them on fantastic adventures, all over the universe and they help him, stop him from being so lonely. __**Who is he Granddad? **_She would ask. Every time he told her the stories she would ask that and her Grandfather would reply with the same words each time. _He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe. He's wonderful. He's the Doctor._

"Oh my God," Jasmine breathed. The Doctor had nearly reached the end of the corridor when she started running. "Doctor!" she shouted as he began to round the corner. "Doctor, wait!"

"How do you know my name?" he demanded as Jasmine reached him.

"You can't do this!" she said.

"Do what?" the Doctor asked.

"Don't play dumb with me Doctor," Jasmine ordered. "As I have told you repeatedly in the past ten minutes, I'm clever. Very clever. I might not be as worldly, or rather, universally as you are, but by earth standards I'm genius level. If those aliens, those Regnenses things, send out electronic waves then they must have some kind of magnetic core. You said that they suck the minds from people; leave them worse than dead?"

"Yes," the Doctor nodded sorrowfully. "They do."

"And unless you stop them, they'll keep devouring minds, yes?"

"Yes, but what's that got to do with anything?"

"You're the Doctor. You save civilisations and defeat terrible monsters. Those creatures have an electro-magnetic core. The quickest and easiest way to get rid of them would be to heat them to a massive temperature. You want everyone out of the college. You want to blow them up."

"Yes," the Doctor breathed. "It's the only way."

"Of course it's not!" Jasmine objected. "There has to be another way!"

"There isn't. Nina, trust me, I can keep the explosion contained to the Elizabeth Hall, nobody will be hurt. I promise."

"Except you're the Doctor. You might save worlds on a daily basis, but you can't always keep your promises. Nobody can. I know that better than most people."

"Nobody will get hurt," the Doctor promised. "I'll get them all out first, the Regnenses won't hurt anyone. Not if I can help it. Now go!"

Jasmine glared at him for a moment, thinking things through in her head, before taking off back up the corridor, sneaking glances down at the Doctor just before he vanished round the corner. Her heart was pounding as she raced down the hallway, snatching up her bag and rounding the corner into the projections room.

"Who are you?" the man inside demanded. Jasmine waved him off, going over to the projector. "I need you to leave now!"

"No," Jasmine stated. "If you want to live, you need to leave. There's a man in there, he has some kind of bomb, or something, and you need to leave! NOW!"

The guy looked terrified for a moment and stood up quickly, his chair falling backwards as he scrambled to get away. Jasmine could hear his screams from halfway down the corridor. Rolling her eyes she turned to the projector, searching for the mains. When she found the plug that the projector connected to she groaned. It had to be under the desk, hidden by a mass of wires didn't it.

Inside the Elizabeth Hall everyone looked up as the images on the screen faded to black. Leibman was looking around, completely furious. He was in on it! Jasmine's heart was beating faster than ever as she stared into the room, searching for the man she knew would come bursting in, his curls whipping around the place, those stupid pink glasses on his face. Sure enough, mere moments later the door flew open and the Doctor rushed in.

He was shouting and everyone was leaving. Students, lecturers, journalists, engineers and astrophysicists all pushed to get out of the hall as quickly as possible. Just as the last few stragglers were leaving the door slammed shut, trapping the Doctor in that room with Leibman, his assistant, a group of three students and a journalist.

Leibman seemed to be conversing with the doctor. Jasmine heard him let out a biting laugh and shivers ran down her spine.

"...on Leibman! You need to stop this!" the Doctor was shouting. "You've only got one chance before I send this place up in flames!"

Crap! Jasmine needed to work fast. She rushed across the room, rummaging through the sound equipment to find what she needed. There, in the cupboards, was everything that she needed for it to work.

"...guts Doctor!"

"Try me!"

The Doctor and Leibman were still shouting at each other, the door shut. Soft whimpers came from the people who had been trapped in there with the two madmen, only urging Jasmine on farther.

"You do not want to challenge me Doctor! I have seen the future, and they are it!" Leibman threw his hands into the air and Jasmine's mouth fell open in horror. Before, she had only been able to see those creatures for a brief second when the Doctor had waved his glasses in her face. They really were tiny, and blue. Tiny, blue creatures buzzing in the air, but Jasmine wasn't wearing those glasses anymore. She could still see them though. They had come out into the open, and that could only mean one thing...

"The future is now!"

"Oh my God," Jasmine breathed. The Regnenses were forming physical bodies. She could see them, they were grouping together to become actual human bodies.

"We are coming Doctor, and there is nothing you can do to stop us!"

There was a terrible scream as the first, tallest and biggest of the now humanoid Regnenses made his way over to the small group of people cowering by the door. It had come from a young girl, one of the students, as the Regnense had placed his hand on her forehead. Jasmine thought that she might throw up at the sight of that girl's widening eyes as the Regnense sucked out her mind. The girl trembled as her body slumped back against the wall, her legs buckling beneath her.

"Her mind is ours!" the Regnense crowed gleefully.

"That isn't possible," the Doctor said, staring. "You shouldn't be able to do that. Not for a good four hundred years at least! How did you even get to be here? The Regnenses were trapped on the prison planet Alcatraz nearly a millennia ago. How on earth did you escape?"

"With the help of the girl," the strange blue figure closest to the Doctor informed him. "The girl who smelled of apple grass and lemons." Jasmine froze. She wore lemon scented perfume and her shampoo was apple. "The girl who dreamed of the stars, who made a pathway there."

"Who? What girl?"

"The girl made of stardust and dreams!"

"Tell me her name!" the Doctor shouted.

Time seemed to slow down. Jasmine's hands, previously flying across the bench that she was working on, slowed as she looked up to see the assembly of blue, slightly fuzzy people in the Elizabeth Hall, all of them gathered there, like an army.

"Jasmine!" their leader roared and the girl in the projection room felt her heart stop. Her hands were trembling and her whole body was shaking like a leaf.

"Who's Jasmine?" the Doctor asked, completely befuddled.

"If you want to know, look up there," the Regnenses leader smirked, or as close to a smirk as a strange, glowing, blue humanoid figure made up of hundreds of tiny buzzing creatures could get. Jasmine could practically feel the blood rushing to her head as she offered up a wicked grin, grabbed her bag and the thing that she had been working on before running out of the projection room and into the hall.

"Did you miss me, Doctor?" she asked.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I'm not going to let you blow up my school," Jasmine replied determinedly.

"What are you going to do, little girl?" the leader of the Regnenses sneered. Jasmine smirked.

"Didn't the Doctor tell you? I'm brilliant. I built a replica of the current Mars Rover when I was just thirteen years old! That was seven years ago. And in that time I just kept getting more brilliant." Jasmine rolled her eyes at the Doctor's muttered comment about modesty. "Nobody can deny it, whoever you are. Just think though; if I could advance the Mars Rover when I was just thirteen, what could I do now?"

"What do you know of our kind?" their leader said, sneering.

"Nothing," the Doctor interjected. "She knows nothing about you!"

"That is true," Jasmine agreed. "But there's one thing that you've forgotten."

"And what's that?"

"I'm brilliant!" Jasmine smirked smugly, bringing one hand down on the small device that she was holding in her hand, quickly covering her ears as sonic waves began to pulse out. The Doctor, the two remaining students and the journalist all followed suit, but the Regnenses were stood stock still, the blue tinge, the LED effect that they had, flickering in what seemed to be pain.

"Retreat!" the lead Regnense ordered.

There was another loud buzzing noise, barely audible over the throbbing noise of Jasmine's own eardrums, and then the Regnenses were gone, scattered into a thousand atoms, Leibman and his assistant with them. Jasmine hit the button on the sonic modulator, stopping the noise and collapsing to her knees, breathing heavily.

"What, what were those things?" the young journalist stammered.

"Aliens!" one of the students gasped. "Has to be!"

"Who are you?" the journalist begged, looking back and forth between the Doctor and Jasmine in complete fear. "Please, who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said. "That is apparently not Nina."

"Oh like I was going to tell you my real name," Jasmine exclaimed. "For all I knew you could have been a paedophile or a rapist!"

"Do I look like a paedophile or a rapist!"

"Well I don't know do I? I've never met a paedophile or a rapist before!"

"So you immediately think that I might be one?"

"Strange man that I've never seen before somehow wanders into a secure university and spends about five minutes staring at the classroom where my lecture was being held before vanishing into thin air and then reappearing in a hidden projection room less than two hours later... well, it might not be rapist worthy but something dodgy was going on!"

"You really think that you're brilliant don't you?"

"Twelve A* GCSEs and five A* A-levels, an acceptance letter to Cambridge and the fact that I just built a sonic modulator in about seven minutes flat says yes," Jasmine retorted, rolling her eyes at the Doctor. "You're welcome, by the way, for getting you out of that mess."

"What mess, I was handling it perfectly! On. My. Own!"

"You were trying to blow this place up!" Jasmine shouted.

"Exactly! Handling it!"

Jasmine shook her head bitterly.

"But you're the Doctor," she whispered. "You save people, you look after them, heal them. You don't go around destroying things! This place, it's one of the grandest, most ancient and beautiful places in the whole of the UK and you want to blow it up! When I was growing up, you were like this incredible, amazing, wonderful man! A man that did everything possible to help people, no matter what. You're not him though. You're so filled with anger and hatred. The Doctor screaming at the universe because nobody seems to be listening."

"Stop!" the Doctor ordered, his eyes flashing. Jasmine took a step closer to him.

"No Doctor. It's you that needs to stop. Stop these games you're playing with yourself."

"I can't!" The Doctor's scream echoed round the room. Jasmine took a step closer again. Now she was only a meter and a half away from him.

"Why?" she asked gently. "Tell me Doctor, please."

"Do you have any idea how much damage you've done?" the Doctor demanded angrily. His eyes burned with fury and for the first time Jasmine felt a flicker of fear as she faced him down. "I could have destroyed them once and for all; but no! You just had to stick your nose in didn't you?"

"You were trying to blow up part of my university! Did you really think that I wouldn't?"

"Go home, Jasmine," the Doctor spat. "Go home, back to your ordinary life filled with lectures and boys and parties. Go back to being "brilliant" on your own time."

He shot one last look at Jasmine before racing out of the door, his eyes still inflamed by rage. His footsteps pounded down the corridor and Jasmine let out a loud sigh, clenching her fists tightly and pursing her lips. The journalist and the two students were pressed against the wall looking fearfully at Jasmine and the place where the Doctor had been stood. Normally Jasmine might have enough patience to ask how they were, but at that moment she was too emotionally exhausted to care much and so she left the room as quickly as possible.

Once she was out in the corridor Jasmine heard the beginning of Little Mix's Wings emanating from her phone. Jasmine fished it from her bag, pressed the ignore call button and carried on till she reached the door that led to the Clare college gardens.

_Mama told me not to waste my life! _Jasmine glanced at her phone again and this time accepted the call, pressing the phone to her ear.

"Luke, what's up?" she asked.

"Jaz!" Luke's voice cried out on the other end of the line. "Oh my God! Are you okay? We've all been totally worried!"

"What, why?" Jasmine asked, confused.

"Didn't you hear? This crazy guy just burst into the Leibman lecture, threatening to blow everyone up if they didn't leave! Everyone was totally panicking when we heard that you'd managed to get into it! We've been calling you for ages! Nobody knew where you were! Please tell me that you're alright?"

"I'm fine Luke," Jasmine sighed. "Really, I am."

"Well, where are you? The police need to speak to you. They're speaking to everyone who was involved or a witness."

"I'm headed into town. Don't follow me!"

"What? No, Jaz, the police need to speak to you!"

"Tough," Jasmine answered. "I didn't see anything, okay! I wasn't there!"

"Jaz, there are witnesses who say they saw a woman of around twenty, relatively tall, long curly brown hair and brown eyes coming onto the scene just as most of them were leaving! Remind you of anyone?" Jasmine swore silently, cursing Luke to damnation. "We all know that it was you who ran in there with a raving psychopath Jaz!"

"Okay, fine, it was me!" Jasmine replied. "But he isn't a psychopath! Not a raving one at least!"

"How would you know that?"

"I know him. Just trust me!"

"You know him!"

Jasmine had to move the phone away from her ear, Luke had shouted so loudly. In the background she could hear the mutters of her other friends, and probably the police too.

"Yes, look, it's complicated Luke! Please," Jasmine was practically begging now, something she _never _did. "I just need some time. On my own. I just need to, to be on my own for a bit." There was silence for a moment. Jasmine had to try just the one more time, appealing to Luke's emotional side. "Please."

"Fine," Luke's sigh was world-weary. "But tomorrow I am dragging you to the police station."

"Thank you," Jasmine said gratefully. "I owe you big time Luke." Over the phone she heard Luke make a non-committal noise and sigh a small goodbye before there was the beep that signalled him hanging up.

Clare College gardens had a relatively low wall that led into a series of expensive back gardens. Around a week and a half ago, for the Clare College May Ball (though it was actually June), Jasmine, Nina, Claudi, Luke, Leo, Jonah and Kyle had climbed through the back gardens of the houses, over the wall to the college and into the gardens where the Ball was being held. Harry and Paige both had tickets to the event, but they were all university students without an awful lot of money to burn and the others hadn't been able to afford it. Well, Nina could have, but she'd always thought that it was more fun to sneak into parties rather than actually buy an invite or be invited to one. She'd also been the one to find the path that led Jasmine out of the college and into town.

It had been three years since Jasmine had moved to Cambridge and in that time she had gone on enough shopping trips, pub crawls and late nights on the town to know her way around rather excellently. The thing was, while Jasmine liked a drink and a party, she was, at heart, a geek and a bookworm and so, the place that she ran to when she needed answers and solutions was the library.

The English Faculty Library was the closest library to Clare, but Jasmine didn't want the closest library; she wanted the best. And the best would probably be Tyndale House. Luckily, it wasn't too far away from Clare so Jasmine didn't have to walk that far.

She reached the library in record time for someone walking. Yet another (more annoying and sometimes offensive) quirks of Jasmine's was that she refused to use public transport like buses. There was just something about the idea of sitting in the same sweaty, revolting seat as the three hundred other people who had sat there before and being exposed to all those disgusting germs. And that was before she got started on the people on the buses...

As a regular visitor at almost all of Cambridge's libraries the staff knew Jasmine by sight and when she walked in she was greeted by smiles and waves by the forty something year old woman at the front desk. Jasmine nodded in return before carrying on into the research room and pulling out her laptop.

Being an engineering student and a computer geek for most of her life had given Jasmine an unusually good ability to hack into Wi-Fi and such like. She could access almost any computer system in the world by the time she was sixteen. Getting into the government's secrets files weren't that difficult once you knew how to do it, so a Cambridge library was never going to challenge her in the slightest.

Jasmine tapped a few buttons and she was in; not just to the Wi-Fi, but into the cataloguing system itself. Then she typed in just two words: Lirri Leibman, and hit the enter key. Within seconds hundreds of thousands of results popped up. Jasmine rolled her eyes. Within those eight hundred and sixty nine thousand, three hundred and seventy two results there would be about twenty results actually worth looking at. God she hated having to wade through the crap results like the article that came up about Lirri Leibman's shoe collection. Seriously, who actually gave a damn about what kind of cow the Italian leather his shoes were made of came from?

For the next couple of hours Jasmine went through result after result on Lirri Leibman. Most of them were, as she had suspected, a load of rubbish, but once in a while, very, very occasionally she would come across a tiny little website, with hardly any information on it, but there would be something, usually just one sentence, but it was enough to give her hope and the strength to carry on wading through the rest of the results.

By the time that Jasmine was finished it was nearing eight thirty and despite her being a "valued customer" she was politely informed that she needed to "get out, for the love of all that is holy" and so Jasmine shut her laptop, shoved it back in her bag and headed back into town. She had all that she needed anyway.

Lirri Leibman was all that was on her mind as she walked back to her dorm rooms. From her research she had discovered that he had been born on the 19th January 1955 to Jonathan and Carrie Leibman in the tiny town of Edenstone in Kent. Jasmine had never even heard of Edenstone before, and apparently neither had Google, as when she googled it, it came up with just the three results. Leibman had done well in school and had been accepted to Cambridge University when he finished school. Leibman had been a Corpus Christi boy. While that particular college had been beautiful and amazing, Clare college had always appealed more to Jasmine.

The strange thing about Leibman was though, that while practically everyone in the world knew his name, he had only garnered any attention for his work several months ago. And it was brilliant work, properly incredible! Anyone, even an idiot, could see the amazing things that Leibman had done in the past few months; but before that, nobody had really heard of him. Sure he was present in the science world, but his inventions and his work was considered ridiculous. Jasmine had had a look at some of them and they were stupid! A seven year old her with a bucket on her head and her hands tied behind her back could have done better than him on quite a lot of his experiments. And it hadn't sounded quite so arrogant in her head when she'd first thought it.

Oh.

She'd been stupid! Jasmine threw her hands in the air angrily, attracting the attention of several passers-by but she didn't care. Leibman was working with the Regnenses; a species of alien who could literally suck the brainwaves and ideas from a person's mind! It was possible to change the polarity of almost anything so why no tiny, blue aliens made of a jelly-like substance with a micro-chip centre and an electro-magnetic core. She'd known that hours ago and yet she hadn't put that together with his sudden success in the industry!

How was she going to fix things now? And what was Leibman up to?

A thought struck Jasmine and she stopped dead in the middle of the street, ignoring the grumbling pedestrians who had to move around her. Leibman had come to Cambridge University to give a lecture. He had brought the aliens into the room with him and the only reason that he hadn't been able to take the minds of everyone in there was because of the Doctor.

They were students of Cambridge University. They were the cream of the crop, the best and the brightest in all the world. If you wanted brilliant, wonderful, genius minds, Cambridge was the place to go!

And after Cambridge you could do the rest of the world. From Cambridge to Oxford, to Harvard to Yale, MIT, Caltech, UCL, KCL, Columbia... And with that kind of brainpower saved up you could do absolutely anything, and no one would be able to outsmart you because you would have the thinking ability of a super-computer; able to predict any move that someone might put into play against you.

Jasmine was almost home now, she was just passing the last house on the row that she had used to sneak into the May Ball... The May Ball. Tonight was the night of Corpus Christi's May Ball. Leibman, a member of the Corpus Christi alumni would be guaranteed entry and what better a place to take the minds of an entire college than at a party where most of them would be completely wasted?

All of a sudden Jasmine had her phone out and was dialling a number she knew off by heart. She had around fifty texts and missed calls from her friends. None from her parents though, there's a surprise, not! Even though it was probably on the news, her parents wouldn't have cared much and clearly hadn't bothered to call or text to find out if she was alright.

"Come one," Jasmine said to herself, tapping her free hand against her leg.

"Jaz! Ohmigod Jaz! I was so worried! I knew I shouldn't have faked that cold! Everyone's been on the phone to me! Nobody's seen you in hours!"

"Nina shut up!" Jasmine cried. Nina fell silent. "I need your help. It's really, really important. People's lives are at stake, okay!"

"What do you need me to do?" Nina asked quietly.

"The thing that you do best," Jasmine grinned. "I've got a party to go to!"

When Jasmine reached Kayseri House she ran up the stairs until she reached the fourth floor where her room was situated. Nina's door opened the moment that Jasmine had reached their floor and she ushered her into her room looking worried.

Nina had clearly been drinking earlier in the day, there was a whiff of booze about her and Jasmine could see the empty beer bottles that had been hastily pushed aside into the kitchen. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, something that Nina only did when she was incredibly scared or worried. Even when she was extremely hung-over, Nina always did something spectacular with her hair. She also looked rather pale and drawn.

"Thank God you're alright!" Nina exclaimed, pulling Jasmine into a tight hug. Jasmine returned it for a moment before pulling back.

"I'm fine, but we have got to get moving!" she said seriously.

"Jaz, are you sure about this? You were nearly killed today!"

"I was nowhere near being killed," Jasmine corrected. "And Nina, there's someone here that I need to save. He's saved me, and he's saved you, so many times, more times than any of us know, and now I need to stop him from making a big mistake." Nina was still silent. "Please Neens. Just trust me on this." Nina bit her lip. She knew as well as Jasmine did that she would only use her old nickname when she was desperate.

"Okay, okay," Nina surrendered. "Shower first while I pick out something for you to wear. Then I'll do your hair and makeup. Go!"

Jasmine grinned at her friend before entering the bathroom. Over the years they had done the exact same thing, time and time again. Despite being an excellent astrophysics student at Cambridge, Nina also had a rather extraordinary talent for fashion and so whenever anyone in their friendship group needed clothing advice she was the woman that they all went to.

Ten minutes later Jasmine was clean, her hair wet and smelling like lemon and apple. Nina didn't use the same shower products as Jasmine did, but she spent so much time in Nina's room, and vice versa, that they both had each other's shower stuff in their bathrooms.

Nina nodded to a dressing table and Jasmine sat on the chair next to it. Then Nina proceeded to attack Jasmine's hair with various products, a hairdryer and Nina's top of the line curling iron. After that she began to do Jasmine's makeup using basically every single product from her extensive collection of makeup. Halfway through Nina's assault on her eyelashes Jasmine began to regret allowing her to do it slightly but another five minutes and Jasmine was very pleased with the results. Her best friend really could work magic with makeup.

"And here is your dress!" Nina practically squealed as she handed the dress over. Jasmine grinned before stepping into the bathroom and slipping it on.

"Nina, I love you," she said as she came out, smoothing the dress down slightly. The May Balls were always themed and this year for Corpus Christi it was to be a masquerade ball. The dress that Nina had picked out was perfect. It was knee-length and sleeveless, the fitted silk a beautiful emerald green, and the lace that covered it was exactly the same colour. The tapered waist and high neckline accentuated her curves and long legs perfectly and she had a green mask, also lacy to cover her face. To finish off the outfit Jasmine wore a pair of green heels, also covered in lace on her feet. Green shimmer covered her eyelids, her eyelashes were lengthened by mascara and eyeliner made her eyes pop. Her lips were coated in "magnetic coral" lipstick, the same shade as her nails. Her long curls, formerly pulled back in a quiff and ponytail, had been twisted half up and half down, held in place with bejewelled hairpins, all green of course. She had never looked better.

"You look fantastic!"

"Thank you Neens," Jasmine said seriously. "I mean it. You're my best friend, you know that."

"Of course I do," Nina replied. "And you really do look fantastic. Make sure you bring that dress back though. It's gorgeous."

"I will, I promise. Why do you even have this though? It fits me perfectly but you're a lot skinnier than I am. You'd look like you were wearing a bin bag, a very stylish one admittedly, but still, it'd be huge on you."

"There was this man," Nina said thoughtfully, almost as if she were in a trance. "The other week, he just knocked on my door and handed me the dress, no questions asked. Told me to give it to the girl with stardust in her wake. Moment he said it I thought of you."

"Well, whoever he was, I'm glad," Jasmine said. "I've got to go now. Again, thank you!"

Jasmine grinned at her friend, hugged her one last time before rushing out of the room, down the stairs and out of Kayseri House. She made her way round the corner and got into the taxi that had been waiting for there for her. Jasmine and Nina often used the taxi company for trips away and so when Jasmine had called them up they had just put the trop on her tab instead of charging her actual money.

The taxi pulled up outside Corpus Christi College less than fifteen minutes later and Jasmine got out thanking the driver as she went.

Around sixty people were milling around outside the college waiting to be allowed in. Jasmine joined them plastering a confident smile on her face. In her three years at Cambridge Jasmine and Nina had snuck into more parties than most people had attended in their lives. The May Balls were trickier to sneak into than most, but it could still be done. And that was exactly what she was going to do.

"Ticket please," the bored looking teenager at the gates said.

"I'm Melanie Kyle, from the Daily Mail," Jasmine informed him haughtily. "I'm here to do an article on the May Ball."

"Oh, go right in then," the teenager said looking terrified. Jasmine flashed a sultry smile at him before carrying on into the May Ball.

Clare's May Balls were always beautiful, the gardens were lit up like heaven and everyone had a fantastic time. Corpus Christi was no different. Their gardens weren't nearly as beautiful as the ones at Clare, but their masquerade ball had transformed the place into a beautiful, wonderful, magical palace. Old fashioned lanterns had been placed strategically around the place to give it maximum light. Marble columns were placed around giving the garden a slightly Roman quality. Tables with delicate, elaborate tablecloths held platters of food piled high and wine glasses stacked in an ornate fashion and filled with the finest wine around. At one end of the gardens a stage had been set up and the melody of Mumford and Sons' Dust Bowl Dance was playing.

Jasmine accepted a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, also masked, and sipped it as she gazed around. Guests were gathered in clumps, talking and laughing. Some of them were dancing to the music and there were so many people there that Jasmine was overwhelmed for a moment. She took another sip of her champagne, closing her eyes and allowing everything to wash over her.

Her eyes opened with a snap. The Doctor, he was here. She could feel him. But where? Where was he?

She swallowed down the final sip of her champagne before handing the empty glass to a passing waiter and headed towards the dancers, her head held high, hips swaying as she walked. The warm summer breeze enveloped her as she made her way across the lawn, returning the smiles and flirting glances that were sent to her but never wavering from her path.

"...ter, Elaine Carter," a redhead wearing completely the wrong shade of purple and a garish mask was saying to the young man that she had cornered by one of the marble pillars. He was dressed simply in a black suit, white shirt and black bowtie with a black eye mask, much like Jasmine's green one, covering his face. "Why don't we dance?"

"Um, I would _love _to dance with you," the young man stammered. "But I'm actually..."

"He's with me," Jasmine interrupted coolly, watching as the redhead Elaine Carter looked her up and down, her eyes widening slightly before nodding to both of them and then turning on her heel. A soft smirk lit up Jasmine's face.

"I told you to go home!" the Doctor snapped.

"And I did," Jasmine retorted. "I went home, had a shower, did my hair (well, my friend Nina did my hair), did my makeup (well, again Nina), put on a dress and came here! Why? Don't you like the dress? According to the label it's Versace. I rather like it. Suits me, don't you think?"

"I 'spose," the Doctor muttered glancing at Jasmine.

"Well, you'd better be more proficient at dancing than you are at giving compliments," she informed him, holding out her hand expectantly. The Doctor looked at her as if she were insane.

"You want me to dance with you?" he asked incredulously. Jasmine nodded.

"I'm not taking no for an answer."

"Fine!"

The Doctor slapped his hand into Jasmine's and allowed her to pull him onto the "dance floor" just as Mumford and Sons' Awake My Soul began to play. Jasmine placed one of the Doctor's hands on her waist and took the other one in her hand, placing her own remaining hand on his should before they began to move to the music.

"How did you even find me?" the Doctor asked suddenly.

"Oh come on!" Jasmine said rolling her eyes. "You might think that you're Mr Mysterious but no other person in the universe, human or not, would wear _Converse Trainers _to a May Ball at one of Cambridge University's most prestigious colleges!"

"Calm down!" Jasmine glared fiercely at the Doctor. Her voice had risen slightly as she had spoken and now her dance partner looked slightly fearful of her. "How did you know to come here anyway?" Jasmine sighed, giving him a slightly patronizing look. It was something that she hated when it was being done to her, but something that she didn't mind doing to other people.

"Let's go with the short answer shall we?" Jasmine suggested. "Leibman is a Corpus Christi alumni, this is the Corpus Christi May Ball. Leibman, the man who is either one of the, or on the side of, the weird electronic jellyfish aliens known as the Regnenses, has immediate access to this party, which incidentally will have guests from one of the best Cambridge colleges. If you want brilliant minds, where else would you go?"

"Alright, alright! You've given me enough lectures for one day don't you think?"

"I'm a Cambridge student. I sit through twice as many lectures in one day! Well, on an ordinary day. I wouldn't exactly say that today has been very ordinary."

"Has been for me," the Doctor remarked and Jasmine found herself laughing. She and the Doctor stayed like that, dancing in perfect time to the music, for a short while. After Jasmine's laughter faded away the pair were silent. Until... "He's here!"

The pair stopped dead.

"Where?"

"I don't know," the Doctor replied frustrated.

"Then keep dancing," Jasmine ordered. She forced the Doctor to turn slowly as they danced, scanning the crowd desperately for Leibman. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"It just had to be a masked ball didn't it?" the Doctor muttered in response. "You elites, you're all desperate for the pomp aren't you! Ow! Watch the foot!" Jasmine glared at him. "Oh, you did it on purpose didn't you?"

"Anyway, question needs answering," Jasmine pointed out.

"Right! So, we're looking for anything unusual, anything that might indicate that Leibman or the Regnenses are here?"

"Why are they here?"

"I don't know," the Doctor mused. "They said that they came here through you, but you're just a student, a human one at that. You haven't been into space, specifically to the prison planet Alcatraz lately have you?" Jasmine stared at him for a moment.

"No," she said flatly. "But those things, the Regnenses, they're like tiny alien jellyfish with a micro-chip nucleus right?"

"Nice analogy," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "And yes, they are."

"They produce magnetic waves that take people's minds, but they must be able to reverse the polarity of the procedure. Maybe they sent messages that they'd already collected to Leibman, giving him the boost he needed to get into the public attention. That lecture, today, it was supposed to be filled with the best of the best, the true elites. If you had the combined brain power of all of those people you could do anything."

"Why Leibman though?" the Doctor asked. "Out of all of the people in the world, why him?"

"Desperation?" Jasmine suggested. "All of Leibman's experiments were complete failures until six months ago. If the Regnenses wanted someone to get them to the top then Leibman was in the perfect position to help them. A Cantab degree, desperate for success, and willing to do what they wanted."

"Ooh, you're rather good aren't you?"

"Doctor," Jasmine said very quietly, and very suddenly. "Four o'clock, the man with the lion mask and the wig."

"I see him."

"I think it's Leibman. Look at his left wrist. The Regnenses are here!"

Sure enough, standing by a pillar, casually leaning against it, was a tall, thin man in a dark navy blue suit, wearing a full face mask in the shape of a lion's face and around his left wrist, half exposed when his sleeve was pushed up slightly was a band of glowing blue, jelly-like substance.

"Well then, Jasmine..."

"Jasmine St James," Jasmine provided. The Doctor flashed her a grin.

"Well then, Jasmine St James, are you ready to save the world?" Jasmine looked at the Doctor, her heart racing and her mind going into overdrive as adrenalin pumped through her body.

"Always," she said with a smile.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The scream echoed around the gardens and the Doctor and Jasmine whirled around, realising that all of a sudden the guests at the party were surrounded by glowing blue figures. Figures that were advancing towards them, faces contorted in horror. They hadn't had faces before. Jasmine turned to the Doctor, fear flashing in her eyes.

"You will surrender!" one of the Regnenses said. The screaming didn't stop and it just got worse as the Regnense outstretched a hand, placing it on the nearest man's forehead. In just a few seconds the man crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

"Oh my God!" Jasmine breathed in horror. "They've gotten stronger!"

"And they'll keep getting stronger if we don't stop them! Come on!"

The Doctor grabbed her hand and began pulling her towards the stage. Jasmine stumbled slightly. Though her heels looked fantastic they weren't the most comfortable things on the planet and the slightly soft earth that they were running on was most certainly not suitable for the shoes. Once she and the Doctor were safely (relatively speaking) hidden from sight, Jasmine slipped them off and carefully placed them on the stage so she could retrieve them later. Nina would murder her if she didn't return them in pristine condition.

"Okay, assets, what do we have?" the Doctor murmured, running a hand through his curls.

"Lots of sound equipment," Jasmine shrugged. "But will that help?" The Doctor bit his lip, desperately thinking.

"Maybe. If I could send a sonic wave through the speakers and find the right frequency, we might be able to rupture their micro-chip nucleus!" The Doctor searched his pockets frantically, producing a silver screwdriver with a blue end and holding it out.

"Sonic screwdriver?" Jasmine asked, peeking round the corner in an attempt to see what was going on.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"No point in having a screwdriver if it isn't sonic!"

"That's what I say!" the Doctor replied emphatically. "Now, can you see where the Regnenses are?" Jasmine poked her head round the corner and her heart promptly jumped into her throat. There was a glowing blue face, made up of the tiny jelly-like Regnenses, about five centimetres away from her own face. She could smell its breath, a sort of metallic gelatine smell, and could actually feel it on her cheeks.

"Run!" she ordered, pulling the Doctor round.

"What, why? Oh right, run!"

Jasmine and the Doctor tore away from behind the stage, leapt over an overturned table and dived behind a bush. The Doctor glanced at Jasmine who was breathing heavily.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I haven't run that fast in about ten years," she answered. "My feet ache like mad because of those stupid heels and I'm hiding in a bush from a bunch of mind-sucking aliens! I've never been better!" She grinned at the Doctor. "Now, what do we do?"

"What to do, now that really is the question," the Doctor muttered. "If we can't get to the sound equipment we won't be able to send that sonic wave; and even then, it isn't guaranteed to work."

"Doctor!" Jasmine said suddenly. An idea had just popped into her head and her eyes were gleaming with excitement over it. "The Regnenses work by sucking the electrical impulses from the brain yes?" The Doctor nodded. "So what if we could broadcast a signal on the same frequency as the one that they use with a single message?"

"A single message, broadcast over the right signal, magnified by a sonic device might just overload those micro-cards!" the Doctor sent an awed look at Jasmine. "Oh Jasmine St James, you weren't lying when you said you were brilliant!"

"Now the only problem is what message to send, and how to send it," Jasmine replied, the grin she'd had fading rapidly.

"What is the one thing that an organism who feeds off of brain-waves hates?" the Doctor asked.

"Lady Gaga," Jasmine suggested with a shrug. "I don't know, what?"

"I don't know either." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "Wait, yes I do! Lady Gaga indeed!"

"Wait, are you serious?" Jasmine asked. "I was only joking. How is Lady Gaga going to help?"

"Not Lady Gaga herself, although she is a magnificent woman, but music in general! The one thing that a scientific, analytical mind like the Regnenses can't stand! Emotion!"

"Oh my God, we're going to save the world with Lady Gaga." Jasmine started laughing.

"Not quite yet," the Doctor groaned. "We still need the music, but how to broadcast it? First we'd need something portable, something that contains the music... something like a phone..." The Doctor stared at Jasmine. "Why do you have a phone?"

"It's 2033," she pointed out. "_Everyone _has a phone! Even dogs have phones!"

"You don't have pockets," the Doctor countered. "Where _on earth_ did you get that from?"

Jasmine smirked, arching a single eyebrow.

"Slight of hand," she informed him. "An old trick of Nina's. She keeps everything in there. Why she bothers is beyond me, she spends more time with her bra on the floor than actually on her body."

"So there actually is a Nina then?"

"Oh yeah, she lives next door to me. We've been best friends since we started at Cambridge. This dress is hers actually."

"She's got good taste," the Doctor remarked.

"You haven't met her yet," Jasmine muttered. "Now! Saving the world!"

"Right, yes!" the Doctor was suddenly back on track. "Do you know how to set up a biometric feed that will supersede all other electronic signals in the area with a matric overlay?"

"Of course," Jasmine answered. "If I can get near to the sound equipment I should be able to do it easily. But what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get you near to the sound equipment!" Jasmine nodded, a determined look on her face. "When I say run, run! Got it?"

"Always," Jasmine answered. "You will be careful, won't you?"

"Always," the Doctor winked at her. "Oh, blue boy! Over here!" He leapt out from the bushes and started running towards the Regnenses while Jasmine looked horrified at the insults he had used. "Now, Jasmine! Go!"

Jasmine leapt to her feet and began racing towards the stage. She jumped over several overturned tables, avoided a group of cowering guests, dodged a pile of broken glasses and spun around a Regnense on her way to the stage. Around one hundred metres away the Doctor was gathering the Regnenses to him, Leibman leading them in a surrounding circle. Only the one that Jasmine had dodged on her way to the stage and sound equipment was not in that particular circle. She raced up the stairs to the stage, running over to the left hand side.

She reached the sound equipment and began searching for the lead that it must have to connect her phone in. When she found it she jammed it in, thanking Nina for forcing her to get the latest iPhone when it had come out several weeks ago. Then she began to work quickly. Ahead she could see the Regnenses surrounding the Doctor and she sped up even more.

"...what're you going to do?" the Doctor was demanding. "With all that brainpower from all of those people and you still don't have a clue!"

"Oh Doctor!" Leibman sneered in return. "It is you who has not a clue! After all this time, you still know nothing! Does it hurt, Doctor? Knowing that you cannot save them, any of them? Knowing that they will grow cold and you will still be there, still alive, the pain of losing them burning you!"

"Big mistake Leibman!" the Doctor thundered. "Because knowing that keeps me fighting! And I will stop you, make no mistake of that!"

"And how are you going to do that, wise man?"

"With the help of a very brilliant girl and Lady Gaga! Now, Jasmine!"

Leibman and the Regnenses turned to look at Jasmine whose fingers were still flying across the controls, desperately trying to accomplish the task that she needed to do.

"Stop her!" Leibman roared stretching out one arm. Jasmine watched in horror as the Regnenses surged out in their true form, Leibman's body crumpling to the floor. They hovered in the air for a split second before pelting at full speed towards Jasmine.

Jasmine slammed her hand down on the play button on her phone and ducked under the desk as quickly as possible. The speakers and all the sound equipment was connected to her phone and so AC/DC's Highway to Hell began blasting at a deafening volume. Amidst the song, barely audible, was a buzzing sound. Jasmine covered her ears but the noise was so loud that she could still hear Bon Scott singing. The buzzing was getting louder and louder and Jasmine quickly realised that the buzzing was the Regnenses as the electronic signal sent messages of emotion and pain to the electronic creatures. There was a final burst of noise, this time it was much higher pitched and slightly painful, before the Regnenses stopped dead in mid-air and exploded.

Because Jasmine was hidden under a desk when the Regnenses imploded, she hadn't been coated in the disgusting, smelly, blue slime that was apparently the by-product of their explosion. Everyone else, it seemed, had been covered in the stuff.

"Doctor!" Jasmine cried, running down the stairs after she had switched the music off. "Doctor, are you alright?"

He was lying on the ground, panting hard and covered in slime when she reached him. Jasmine extended a hand which he accepted and she pulled him up.

"Nice work," he grinned. "Got to love AC/DC; but I wish that they hadn't exploded in such a fashion. It's going to take me weeks to get these slime stains out of my waistcoat!"

"Idiot!" Jasmine found herself laughing but it soon faded when she looked at the destruction that surrounded them. "Do you think we should help them?" There were several bodies lying on the floor and most of the remaining guests were huddled in corners, clinging together in sobbing masses. Jasmine wasn't quite sure what to do. The only comfort that she'd ever given to people was after one of Nina's disastrous break ups and then she'd sat on her friend's sofa with a duvet, ice cream and terrible movies for a whole day. Somehow she had the feeling that that wouldn't work for this lot. The Doctor opened his mouth to answer when a shout came.

"Police! Put your hands up!"

A group of about forty SWAT team operatives burst through the entrance to the gardens and Jasmine and the Doctor turned to look at them.

"Oh," the SWAT leader said, lowering his gun. "What happened?"

"Moron!" Jasmine muttered. "Do you think anyone would mind if I took that gun and shoved it up his-"

"Now," the Doctor said warningly. "Behave!" Jasmine pouted.

"Fine," she growled. "But if he asks me if I would be willing to give a witness statement I will smack him. Or have him fired. Nina once dated the DCI for a short time. Well, when I say she dated him I mean that she slept with him. I'm sure I'd be able to pull a few favours."

"You really have an attitude problem," the Doctor said looking at Jasmine who snorted elegantly.

"What, and you don't?"

The Doctor merely glared at Jasmine. She raised her eyebrows and he sighed.

"You two, over here!" one of the policemen shouted. Jasmine looked contemptibly at him but followed the Doctor over to the police muttering expletives under her breath. The Doctor looked at her in surprise.

"For a Cambridge girl you know an awful lot of swear words," he remarked.

"My brother's in the army," Jasmine said, as if this explained everything, which it kind of did.

The sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon when the police were done. They had been interviewed by the police for about three hours and that was before the journalists arrived. Jasmine was at the end of her tether and when a member of the police tried to confiscate her phone the Doctor quite literally had to drag her away in order to stop her from being arrested for assault. Or GBH. Jasmine grabbed her shoes and then she and the Doctor were allowed to leave.

"Gives a whole new meaning to the survivor's photo, doesn't it?" Jasmine remarked.

"Indeed," the Doctor sighed. "I don't suppose you know anywhere I can get a shower do you? My ship is a bit far away."

"My place is only a few streets away," Jasmine giggled. "You can use my shower there."

"Thanks," the Doctor said gratefully. "Really, thank you!" Jasmine shook her head, laughing.

When they reached Kayseri House the Doctor groaned at the four flights of stairs that he would have to climb up to reach Jasmine's dorm room. Jasmine just grinned and dragged him up. She slotted her key into the lock and turned it, her hands trembling slightly.

"Bathroom's through there," Jasmine pointed it out as she closed the door behind them. "I'll get you some clothes. Oh, and if you get so much as a _smudge _of slime on any of my furniture then you will be going out the window!" The Doctor's eyes widened. "You can still see the stains on the ground below from the last bloke who made a mess in here!"

"I'm, just going to go for a shower," the Doctor said, edging into the bathroom.

Jasmine grinned and went into her own room. She slipped her dress off and searched through her wardrobe until she found something appropriate, casual and stylish to wear. Most of her wardrobe had been bought when she was sober, but as Jasmine looked at several items of clothing, in particular the leather trousers and tight tank tops, she did have to wonder whether Nina had put drugs in her drink in order to get her to buy that kind of clothing. Eventually she decided to go with a purple and white striped collarless shirt, a purple waistcoat with a silk back, some skin tight jeans and her favourite brown leather boots. She carefully removed the hairpins from her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail.

Once she was dressed Jasmine pulled out a cardboard box from the bottom of her wardrobe. Inside she pulled out a pair of faded jeans and a t-shirt. Jasmine brought the top up to her nose and inhaled deeply, letting the memories wash over her for a moment.

"Jasmine," the Doctor called from the other room, making Jasmine jump.

"Coming," Jasmine called back. She entered her living room again, holding the clothes in her arms, before handing them to the Doctor. "Here," she said with a distracted smile. "They're a bit out of date and they might be a bit big, but I'm sure you'd prefer these to any of my clothes." The Doctor grinned.

"Thanks," he said. "Nice dressing gown by the way!" Jasmine flushed slightly. She had only just realised that he was clad only in her original Japanese Kimono and nothing else.

"Just, put these on!" Jasmine ordered. "Oh God, I'm going to have to have that dry cleaned now."

"Yeah, sorry about that. You didn't have any towels."

"Put the clothes on," Jasmine repeated in a bored tone. The Doctor grinned at her and disappeared back into the bathroom. When he came out he was dressed in the clothes that Jasmine had given him and he was once again running a hand through his mass of curls.

"How do I look?" he asked.

"Like you walked out of 2030 itself," Jasmine grinned. "Or 2013. Fashion really hasn't changed that much since then."

"Tell me about it," the Doctor sighed. "Anyway, I'd best be going back to my ship."

"The TARDIS."

"Yes, how did you know?" the Doctor asked. Jasmine shrugged.

"My bedtime stories as a child were all about you and your amazing adventures," she told him. "The Doctor and the TARDIS travelling through space and time saving the universe again and again."

"Right." The Doctor looked very confused. "Well, I really should be going. People to see, things to do..."

"Worlds to save," Jasmine added.

"That too," the Doctor grinned.

"Doctor," Jasmine said. "Before you go, can I, I mean, if it's alright, can I see the TARDIS?"

"Jasmine St James, the girl who just saved the earth, or Cambridge at the very least, wants to see my humble little ship?" Jasmine rolled her eyes and nodded. "In that case, Miss St James, your wish is my command. Let's go!"

Jasmine's eyes sparkled. She grabbed her coat and the Doctor's hand and pulled him out of her dorm room, down the stairs and out of Kayseri House.

"Hang on, we're by the river," the Doctor said. "The TARDIS is just down here."

He began jogging over the bridge and Jasmine had to start running to keep up. They dashed across the road and swung their legs over the crash barrier and made their way down the slight bank. The Doctor stopped dead when they were under the bridge. There was nothing there. Jasmine was about to say so when the Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out and pressed a button on the side. It bleeped for a moment and then the noise began, an incredible whirring noise and with it came the blue box, the blue police box.

"Oh wow!" Jasmine breathed. "This is it? This is the TARDIS?"

"The one and only," the Doctor grinned. "Take a look inside!"

The Doctor opened the TARDIS door and ushered Jasmine in. Jasmine's mouth fell open at the sight.

"It's beautiful," she laughed. "Absolutely beautiful!"

And she was right. It was beautiful. Jasmine had heard stories of the TARDIS before. Everyone knew that it was bigger on the inside but she had never imagined how incredible it was. Leading from the doors to the centre of the room was a luminous blue pathway made of glass. Circular plates of metal were dotted underneath it forming a kind of steam-punk stepping stone pathway. At the centre of the room was the console and it was magnificent. It seemed to be made of bronze and covered in buttons, keyboards, levers and even a strange crystal ball thing. Standing vertically up and running through the centre of the entire TARDIS, contained in a glass cylinder, pulsing the blue and green light was the core. It led up to the ceiling of the TARDIS which seemed to be made of red velvet with a huge bronze disc at the centre. The rest of the floor, other than that blue walkway, was made of dark, panelled wood and dotted around the place were several rugs. Red armchairs and sofas were also randomly placed with little coffee tables and even several potted plants. Against one wall was a bookshelf and above the bookshelf was a platform running round the whole room. That wall was also panelled with wood, and had dozens and dozens of lights shining out of it. About five staircases led down from that little platform, all of them with bronze handles. The rest of the walls in the TARDIS were patterned like brick walls and had port hole windows in them. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, as did several screens. By the door was an antique coat stand. It was beautiful.

"You like?" the Doctor asked.

"I love!" Jasmine replied, completely stunned. "It's the most wonderful, incredible, amazing thing that I've ever seen!"

"Well then, you won't mind spending a fair amount of time in here, will you?"

"What do you mean?" Jasmine's heart was racing. If he meant what she thought he did then she might just explode with happiness.

"Jasmine St James," the Doctor began. "You are the most arrogant, annoying, bossy human that I have ever met. But you weren't lying when you said that you were brilliant; and the universe could always do with more brilliant people out there. So what do you say? Will you join me?"

"Always!" Jasmine grinned, closing the doors behind her and tossing her jacket onto the coat stand. The Doctor smiled back, his eyes shining with excitement.

"Here we go!" the Doctor called out.

Here we go.


End file.
